Baths - Pop Music/False B-Sides (Anticon, 2011)

The May bank holiday weekend is fast approaching and with it comes a host of gigs to help us kick off the summer season.  I really can’t wait for the Baths and Solar Bears gig on the 29^th April, so, with that in mind, I’m going to give a quick review of Baths’ most recent release.

Pop Music/False B-Sides is Will Weisenfeld’s second release under the name Baths.  The album is only available on digital download, the code for which can be purchased at his gigs for a nominal fee.  Weisenfeld has stated that the release is more of a collection of songs that he has made since Cerulean, and promises to begin work on a full release album later this year.  Pop Music/False B-Sides certainly feels like a continuation of Cerulean with the same down-tempo, glitchy beats that carry the dreamy samples and vocal melodies along.

On first listening to the opening track I wondered if my headphones had been damaged as the rumbling melody emerged.  But no, just a bit of playful level clipping before the track kicks off proper with a slightly more dance-influenced beat than found on Cerulean.  This is again the way on the third track “Nordic Laurel”, as a Gold Panda-style fragmented sample drives the rhythm, with a drum machine keeping time in the background.  

As with Cerulean, manipulated piano and guitar overdubs feature heavily on the album, with the likes of “Overseas”, “Tourian Courtship”, “Iniuria Palace” and the “The Vapors” being good examples of Weisenfeld’s dexterity on both instruments.  

It's not until “Seaside Town” that the hip-hop influenced beats featured on Cerulean emerge, against some washy pads and samples.  “Flux” contains the most glitchy and complex beats on the album, almost so complex as to lose any sense of time keeping, with the main rhythm being kept by the sidechained synth as it pulsates throughout.

As with Cerulean much of the lyrical content of the album centres around affairs of the heart, with lost and unrequited love being the central theme of “Pop Song”, “Iniuria Palace” and “Lovesick Synthetic”. 

“The Vapors” offers a quiet moment of melodic contemplation before the closing song, “Damnation”, draws everything to a climax, in a symphony of stuttered and distorted harmonic textures.

The album will hopefully be available to buy at the Workman’s Club on the 29^th April, 2011.  Also worth checking out are Weisenfeld’s recordings under his other monikers Post-Foetus and Geotic, and these albums are available for free download here.